NEW YORK -- In the age of the cell phone, is time running out for the wristwatch?

Charlie Wollman thinks so. The 16-year-old student from New Jersey doesn’t own a watch. To tell time, he pulls out his wireless phone or glances at public clocks.

A watch, he says, is "an extra piece of equipment with no necessary function."

"A phone has more accurate time, automatically switches time zones and is always with you," said Wollman, who edits the TeenTechBlog Web site. He said he might wear a watch someday to make an impression, but as his generation grows up and goes to work, "the watch may increasingly lose meaning."

With more teens and young adults sharing that opinion, the watch industry is at a crossroads.

"It’s definitely true that we’re seeing a decline in the number of watches sold to younger people," said Louis Galie, senior vice president for technology at Timex Corp., the top U.S. watch maker. He said fewer young people wear watches today than five years ago.

Watch buying also is down over all. In 2007, 30 percent of adults said they bought a watch within the last year, compared to 35 percent in 2004, according toExperian Consumer Research.

The biggest sales declines are with low-end models, especially sub- watches that represent 15 percent to 20 percent of the market’s total value,Galie said.

However, the watch industry still does very well at making money, with 2007 its best year ever, Galie said. He said sales are steady for mid-priced watches costing up to 0 and are improving above that, with substantial growth for watches costing ,000 and up.

Still, a question looms: Will the current generation of young people, who eschew watches, keep their wrists bare as they get older?

"The entire jewelry industry, not to mention the economy of Switzerland, is waiting for the answer," joked Jeffrey Cole, director of the Center for the Digital Future, which looks at the social effects of technology.

Cole said his focus groups pointed to the surprising trend of many teens not wearing watches and telling time with phones. A small follow-up survey with about 500 people last December found more than 60 percent of people aged 12 to 24 don’t wear watches, he said.

The center’s research, now in its eighth year, also shows that many teens still don’t wear watches when they reach their early 20s, he said.

The watch industry has already lost some seasonal gains around graduation time, when watches were once popular gifts, said TimothyDowd, an analyst with the Packaged Facts product research firm. He said kids want portable electronics instead.

Traditional mechanical watches are regaining prominence after decades of dominance by battery-powered models, he said. At the other extreme, high-tech is popular, especially in sports watches that include global positioning technology and other features.

A key strategy is to avoid competing head-to-head with cell phones, which have advantages such as bigger screens and keypads, he said.

Instead, future watches may embrace high-speed wireless networks differently, delivering news alerts or collecting and transmitting sports performance data, he said.

Cell phones, the Swiss Army knives of gadgets, have long been disruptive devices, battering or altering older technologies and tools.

Public pay phones may be the biggest casualty, but land-line phones also are under pressure, with more consumers cutting the cord.

Do-everything wireless handsets with multimedia functions also are hammering pocket calculators, address books and printed wallet photos.

Wallets themselves may be next on the hit list if mobile commerce technology takes off, Cole said. (NYT)